


Popkins

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Tower - Stephen King, Joker (2019)
Genre: M/M, Moral Lessons, Pre-Fall of Gilead (The Dark Tower Series), gunslinger AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23711437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: A man can live on bread and meat, so long as he takes his greens now and then.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Joker (DCU)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Popkins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mr-finch (soubriquet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts).



> once again; if you're not familiar with The Dark Tower books, this might make less than much sense. If you have, may it do ya fine. This short fic takes place mostly in memory, as Joker is getting ready to leave on a posting after he and Arthur have both passed their trials to become gunslingers. They're being sent out alone, because their superiors don't precisely believe what they're being sent to do is anything worth taking seriously, and Joker and Arthur are known to work well together.
> 
> Usually, gunslingers either work singleton or in small groups of three or more, ka-tet. A tet of two is considered unwieldy, especially when the members are of an age.
> 
> Staab is the tutor tasked with teaching apprentice gunslingers philosophy and logic, like Vannay in the source material. Ardus is their other tutor, who teaches the ways of war.
> 
> A popkin is a word for a sandwich; bread and meat.

There’s a certain dry pleasure in having an intuition proved right when most others insisted you must be wrong. Joker’s fairly certain that any of the preacher men his father enjoyed listening to would call this feeling 'pride' and thus a personal failing. Followers of Man Jesus seemed terrible fond of finding personal failings. 

Staab had lectured them all many times that a man earned the right to pride, and that there was no failing in a feeling that came to a man naturally. Given that Staab was the one tasked with teaching future gunslingers philosophy and logic, Joker found himself more inclined to trust his take than that of some nut fawning over Man Jesus.

Joker had known -- long and long he's known -- that Arthur was the one, possibly the  _ only _ , man he'd trust enough to have any kind of true tet-bond. He believed in the creed and he was honest enough with the men they served with, trusted them not to be deliberately steering him toward ruin. They were working for the same goal, true enough, and Joker believed in that goal.

But they weren't tet. 

This wasn't the sort of thing a man -- nor a boy, really -- spoke of with a teacher like Ardus, however much Joker tended to prefer the man's rough company. It had weighed on him some, though, as a youth, uncertain after a month spent on his father's land, away from Gilead and the comforts of known and friendly faces, so he'd taken the matter to Staab.

Can a tet be two, he'd asked, and Staab had sat in that quiet way he had, hands folded in his lap as he considered the matter. Much as Joker didn't care for silence, Staab's quiet never felt pointed nor did it ever seem a dismissal; Staab sat silent like a man flicking through a great catalog of information, pulling from his mental index and cross referencing before he could form a proper response.

And after some length of time, Staab put his hands on the wheels of his chair and gestured to Joker with a nod to follow him. He'd lead them to the kitchen, bustling as it was while supper was made, and bade Joker watch each dish prepared.

What two dishes are but two ingredients? What meal is made of but two dishes?

And Joker had frowned and ached and understood the meaning, until Staab took his hand and gestured to the baker kneading out his flat bread, tossing each loaf on a hot pan. The bread was soft and fragrant, and as each pan cooked up golden brown, one of the assistants fetched it barehanded from the pan and folded it around meat shaved from the roast turning on the spit.

"You and young Arthur are meat and bread," Staab said, hands folding in his lap again as he cut to the unspoken heart of the matter, in the same agonizing precision he often had. "Together a lovely popkin, savoury and sustaining. But you need, now and then, to be bolstered by another, or many others. That doesn't mean the bond matters less; it means it's the true thread, all else woven 'round it. It also means you need to accept roughage when it's put on your plate, rather than fight it."

So Joker had frowned and ached and thanked Staab for the lesson, helping his teacher back up the great ramps toward his quarters and then sat alone for a time to think. His trial had been drawing near; still, many turns of the moon and season later, he could remember the feeling of it gaining on him. 

He'd worried, knowing that after his trial he'd likely be sent out on task, for there were a great many goings on in the world these days, and few enough men to see each through. Even if he was left near to Gilead -- which he doubted he would be -- he wouldn't be seeing much of Arthur while he still served as a 'prentice. Would the bond he'd forged with Arthur last through until after Arthur's own trial? 

Now, packing the sparse gunna he considered necessaries, there's a grim pleasure -- perverse, a Jesus-lover would surely say -- in being sent on this second task of his career with Arthur as his only companion. Having it be seen and recognized by those in charge that he and Arthur worked well enough on their own to not only be trusted with the task, but be set to it alone.

"Popkin," he mutters to himself, laughing as he folds his purse closed as slings the bag over his shoulder. "A man can live on popkins alone, given a bite of greens now and then."

Arthur would laugh too, when he told him. And under that laughter, Arthur would understand, because they were true thread. They were their own tet, two from many made into one whole, and they'd survive long and well in each other's company.


End file.
